ANALYZING THE BLACK STUDENT BODY OF HOGWARTS ACADEMYIs the black
population of the UK adequately represented?

The Harry Potter
books and movies are among the most popular the world has ever seen. But
after hearing many civil rights advocates bring up the lack of black
characters in the film's school, I decided to pop in the DVD of Harry
Potter and The Sorcerer's Stone, and see for myself. Indeed, after
casually viewing the film, I thought there to be only a couple black
students at the famous Wizard's academy, but perhaps some careful use of
pausing and picking through the entire movie would straighten things out.

This is Lee Jordan,
with a good 2 minutes of screen time in this movie, he's the most
prominent black character in the film. While some students focus on
potions, spells, or The Dark Arts, Lee's apparently attending Hogwarts on
a Sportscasting scholarship.

Next we have an
unnamed boy who's function at the school is pretty much limited to giving
funny looks when someone says something startling. As the closed caption
excerpt shows, he at least gets a line of dialogue, which makes him the
only other black character in the movie that does.

This mysterious
Griffindor Quidditch player has a few cool action scenes, and scores some
points for her team, but doesn't contribute much else, after she's knocked
unconscious from her broom. Though not named in the film, the books
identify her as Angelina Jordan.

The rest of the roles
are merely extras. Here we have the same unnamed boy mentioned above,
with two girls among the 1st year inductees at Hogwarts.

And at the Hufflepuff
table, if you blink, you'll miss this chap talking with his buddies, near
the movie's end.

Here's 3 more during
a slightly chaotic scene in the banquet hall.

And here's a girl
just waiting in the hallway, staring at Harry mysteriously as they walk
buy.

The gent on the right
looks like Gary Coleman's pal "Dudley" from Diff'rent Strokes!

Here's the only
appearance from this lighter skinned black student during the "Sorting
Hat" sequence at the film's start.

And when it appeared
that all the black students were a part of the Griffindor group, a quick
eye can catch 2 Slytherin students representing during the big Quidditch
match.

And here's another.
She seems to be the least enthusiastic of the bunch.

Here's two girls that
you'll never see again in the film.

And a boy who appears for this
split second during the mail delivery scene as a member of Griffindor,
only to never show up again, either.

There's a few black
adults in the faculty as well. Here's a gender neutral wizard to the
right of Dumbledore in a rare shot in which candles aren't hovering in
front of her/his face.

And seated next to
Professor Snape are two other black faculty members. We never see them
again, either.

So what's the
breakdown really like? What percent of the overall school population do
the 17 black students that appear in the movie, make up? Though no actual
attendance figure is shared, I figured you could get a pretty accurate
gauge by counting the student seats in the banquet hall. From this
picture, I've counted 272, which makes the black students 6% of the
overall makeup. According to the UK's Office of National Statistics,
minority ethnic groups (which would include non black minorities as well)
represent 7% of the overall population. Considering this, it appears that
Professor Dumbledore is doing a pretty fair job of making sure his student
makeup accurately reflects that of the general populace.